Spock implied that one of his ancestors was either Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Sherlock Holmes.
DS9 referenced the movie Buckaroo Banzai.
I'm sure it was Sir Arthur, since Holmes is fictional even within the Trek universe.
OTOH, it could also have been one of his Vulcan ancestors, as the statement "If you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains - however improbable - MUST be the truth" is definitely in line with Vulcan logic.
Or it could be both - Doyle (or perhaps Bell) being an alien would fit perfectly with the Trek style, and a stranded Vulcan would probably be our best match for the impulsive, reclusive, eccentric but rigorously logical crime-fighting consultant. Even if ENT sorta preempted that with "Carbon Creek". (And a couple of novels before that, of course.)
Timo Saloniemi
Sherlock Holmes and
Star Trek both exist in some versions of the Wold Newton Universe. Thus Spock could have been meant that Sherlock Holmes was his ancestor in those versions of the Wold Newton universe.
http://www.pjfarmer.com/woldnewton/Spock.htm
The presumption from the family trees was that most – if not all – fictional characters could be said to share the same universe. Farmer himself penned a number of crossover fiction stories and novels set in what is now termed the Wold Newton Universe, largely based around the three central pillars of
Tarzan,
Holmes and
Savage, but also incorporating (among others)
Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos into the universe. Subsequently, the early history of the WNU has been expanded forwards and backwards in time to incorporate the very early history of
Conan the Barbarian (through the works of
Robert E. Howard,
L. Sprague de Camp,
Roy Thomas and others), right through to the far-future exploits of the many characters in the
Star Trek universe.
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win_Scott_Eckert
Star Trek fans who consider
Star Trek to be part of the larger Wold Newton universe can therefore consider Spock to be descended from Sherlock Holmes, or from Dr. Watson's "literary agent" Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, or possibly from both of them through different ancestral lines.
Star Trek fans who don't consider
Star Trek to be part of the larger Wold Newton universe will mostly want to reject the idea that Spock could be descended from Sherlock Holmes. They will say that Sherlock Holmes is fictional in our world and
Star Trek should be set in a possible future of our world, therefore it is impossible for Sherlock Holmes to be a real historic person and an ancestor of Spock. It would be poorly written and low plausibility science fiction to make Sherlock Holmes an ancestor of Spock.
However, many historical references to Earth's past in
Star Trek are inaccurate. This means that some different events have happen in Earth's past in the universe of
Star Trek than happened in our universe. Therefore
Star Trek doesn't happen in the future of our universe but in the future of an alternate universe that already diverged from ours before the first
Star Trek productions were ever made.
So if
Star Trek happens in an alternate universe that was already different from ours before the 1960s,
Star Trek might happen in an alternate universe different enough from ours that Sherlock Holmes might have been a real historic person in it. So even
Star Trek fans who reject the idea that
Star Trek is part of the Wold Newton Universe might possibly wonder whether Spock is descended from Sherlock Holmes, or from Dr. Watson's "literary agent" Sir Arthur Conan, or possibly from both of them through different ancestral lines.
see also this thread:
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/star-trek-is-part-of-mcu.293148/
